A lot of people have a great expectation to the Robots these days. Robot is expected to play the following three roles;

1. The role to be useful for human
2. The role to understand the human
3. The role to impresses the human

As the role 1), a robot is a worker, a helper, a servant, a secretary, a friend, or a pet. There are flooding demands to the Robots not only in the field of industry, but also in that of social welfare and security & safety of our dairy life. Many people are eager to realize a robot witch provides us the stated functions. Although it would be a quite tough trial to realize the technology to realize these functions, I believe, it is important to challenge the difficulty together with the Asian neighbors.

Also if we create the robots which play the role of 2), we will better understand the human and will find how fantastic we human is. In this sense, a robot will play a role as an ultimate target of science. Recent robotics study has been steadily changing the conventional mechanical engineering (thermodynamics, kinematics , machine dynamics, and material dynamics) from a new point of view of robotics. In another words, a renaissance by the robotics is coming not only in the field of mechanical engineering but also in the extensive field of scientific and engineering fields at the same time. The renaissance and the new development to the field of study from the viewpoint of the robotics study is the most important subject for us to tackle, cooperating with the Asian neighbors hand in hand as we play an active part in Asia in terms of robotics. Moreover, when we recollect how the people are impressed once they see the robot move, it is persuasive that the robots play the role 3).

While the young people are said to become less interested in science and technology, we are often deeply impressed or moved by the passion and eagerness of the young persond who devote themselves to construct their own robots. I believe that it will be fantastic if the Asian Robotics Societies, in cooperation with each other, could make good use of such passion and eagerness in constructing robots to the education purpose by appealing to the young people. On the other hand, the large scale robot project should be established to shake and encourage the heart of people. And a dream of human beings to use the robots peacefully through the research of the robots should be pursuit. These aspects relates the third role of robot of 3). This efforts will vitalize the Asian people who are becoming more and more distinguished in the future.

We hope that the website established by the Asian Robotics Society Union help to fully bloom the roles of the robots mentioned above. We wish that the site will become a driving force to promote the robots in the future.

Tomomasa Sato, the 13th president of RSJ